I know that many people are looking forward to my telling of my vacation, especially about the part where I was dead, but as I was writing it last night (actually, dictating it to the computer, just like this entry) I had gotten 45 paragraphs in thought, “Gee, I ought to save this at some point,” and at that very moment, my text editor decided to completely crash on me. So the end result is that you won’t be hearing about my trip for a little while longer yet. Suffice to say that I have enough to say about it that I will definitely need to write about it.
In the meantime, allow me to complain about my satellite dish receiver. I’ve been a longtime Dish Network customer, and when we moved to the new house we renewed our subscription to the service and got all brand-new equipment. One of the weird things about the new equipment is that it’s all rental. We previously owned our equipment, now we rent it for a small fee every month just like other people do from their cable companies. It’s not a big deal, but if I think about it too much it really gets on my nerves. Fortunately, there is an upside.
Once about every two years, the satellite receiver dies. There’s really no explanation for it, although they frequently blame it on electrical surges, which is nigh impossible considering how much surge suppression I put between the power line and the receiver. Whatever the cause, the receiver just starts behaving strangely and eventually won’t let you watch TV anymore.
Our receiver was acting up a bit even before we left for vacation, I just didn’t have the time to mess with it. Basically, it would turn on, run through a little diagnostic routine, and then turn off inexplicably. If you pushed the right combination of buttons at the right time, you could convince it to turn on and watch Spike TV, but that’s all it would let you watch, and only for about three minutes before it would turn off again.
I called Dish Network support, and they put me through the usual reset procedure, unplug procedure, plug it into a different place procedure, unplug the satellite line from the receiver procedure, and a few other stupid little things before they agreed to send me a new receiver. Hence the benefit of renting the receiver: when something goes wrong with the one you have, they just send you a brand-new one.
Fortunately, in comparison to the last time this happened, we were smack in the middle of September, when all the new shows start coming on TV, and we were left without a TV receiver with which to watch any season premieres. This time, we get at least a week or two leeway before things get dicey.
The new satellite receiver arrived today, complete with a return authorization sticker and prepaid shipping. All I need to do now is replace the existing receiver with the new receiver, and ship the old one back to them. Assuming that I didn’t abuse the old receiver, which I didn’t, there should be no additional charge for the receiver and I should be able to watch TV as the new season soon starts.
